from the because-of-course dept

As we've mentioned in the past, every year for over a decade, Andy Baio scours the internet to see what Oscar-nominated movies have been put online (the answer is usually almost all of them). He started this back in 2004, when the MPAA laughably claimed that the very first "screener" copy of a nominated movie had been put online. Baio realized that it was hardly the first and there were many more. His latest analysis is up and it shows that, yet again, nearly all nominated movies are available. He's actually kept the details of every year's search in a big Google spreadsheet.

There are some interesting findings in the data, including that screener copies don't matter much any more. For years, the MPAA -- which still can't get over its piracy obsession -- insisted that screener leaks were a huge problem. Back in 2003 the MPAA wanted to ban screener DVDs entirely, which pissed off a bunch of filmmakers who feared that their films wouldn't get voted on for the Oscars. Since then, they've focused on ridiculous proprietary systems that would only play on special DVD players -- which just pissed off viewers. In the last few years, they've just focused on watermarked DVDs, which means that when the videos inevitably leak, they can be tracked back to whose copy leaked -- like Ellen Degeneris' copies last year.

But here’s the thing: screeners are stuck in the last decade. While we’re all streaming HD movies from iTunes or Netflix, the movie studios almost universally send screeners by mail on DVDs, which is forever stuck in low-resolution standard-definition quality. A small handful are sent in higher-definition Blu-ray.

This year, one Academy member received 68 screeners — 59 on DVD and only eight on Blu-ray. Only 13% of screeners were sent to voters in HD quality.

As a result, virtually any HD source is more prestigious than a DVD screener. And with the shift to online distribution, there’s an increasing supply of possible HD sources to draw from before screeners are ever sent to voters.

And of course, the data also shows that cammed copies (someone sitting in a theater with a camera filming it) are virtually non-existent here. This is another issue that we've covered for years, with the MPAA famously making up numbers out of thin air concerning how big a "problem" it was. But, of course, the quality on those copies suck, and so people focus on HD, which they inevitably get.

Of this year’s 36 nominated films, 34 already leaked online in some form — everything except Song of the Sea and Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me.

But only 33% of those were leaked from screeners, down from a high of 89% in 2003 and 2004.

As he notes, with the MPAA stupidly focused on screeners, they think they're winning the battle, because here's the percentage of actual screeners leaked:

So, I'm sure the content protection team at the MPAA are all excited about this. They're vanquishing the screener piracy monster. But as Baio points out, that's bullshit, because just as many films are leaking, but in HD quality from HD sources instead of screeners:

While this year's figure is currently 89%, there's a decent chance it will go higher before the Oscars happen. As Baio notes, 44% of the films this year are HD sources, not from screeners or from retail releases.

In other words: all this effort from the "content protection" team at the MPAA yields absolutely no benefit at all.

from the killing-DRM dept

In most areas of entertainment, DRM is an option. If you want to publish an ebook, you don't have to use DRM. Same for video games and music. While these others areas of entertainment are moving away from DRM, there is one prominent holdout on the DRM front: movies. Every official distribution and streaming service for the movie industry has some form of required DRM. This includes streaming services such as Hulu and Netflix, download services like Amazon and iTunes, and even the physical media such as DVD and Blu-ray. According to the larger studios, DRM is a necessity, even though its effectiveness is questionable at best and customers hate it. But what about those studios that want to deliver a High Definition experience without the burden of DRM? What choices do they have? If all they want to do is allow people to stream or download the movie, they have plenty of options, but what if they want to include the full feature list available via Blu-ray?

This is one quandary that Terry Hancock of Free Software Magazine found himself facing a little over a year ago. He had been working on two films and wanted a High Definition feature rich experience without the hassle of Blu-ray DRM. He had looked at multiple options, many of which fell a little flat in the end. However, one stood out as the most reasonable option for what he wanted to do. He had to write his own open, DRM-free, HD video standard.

This may sound like a quixotic goal for a lone individual without corporate backing to develop, but most of the money spent on developing Blu-Ray was spent on the DRM technology -- meaning the technology to make it not play under certain circumstances. The actual business of getting menus and video to work is much simpler, and a lot of the work has already been done. So a format without DRM, based on open standards is intrinsically more attainable.

Think about that. Designing DRM is designing ways in which your movie will not play. Why would anyone want to waste time and money on such an idiotic goal? You would think that movie producers would want people to watch their movies. This idea is what pushed Terry to this point. Why waste time and money on using a DRM'ed media like Blu-ray to release what he wants to be a free culture movie? Even if he tried to work around the DRM of Blu-ray, there is no guarantee that the movies would play in standard Blu-ray players and he would still have to deal with licensing issues.

Terry has not set himself up for disappointment with this standard. He recognizes that it will not unseat Blu-ray as the mass market standard but rather is looking at this for use as a promotional format for those who want to distribute physical media. His examples include using the standard for films as Kickstarter rewards or to distribute films at conventions. There are a lot of opportunities for this to be successful in the indie scene.

On top of this, Terry plans to make the standard completely open and open source. While he does not have an open source web destination yet, he plans to have one ready soon. This choice is probably the key to gaining a more wide spread adoption. If he had tried to keep it locked up in the same way as Blu-ray or DVD, it would never take off.

I applaud the effort Terry is putting into this project. However, it is frustrating that such a project needs to exist. The insistence of the movie studios that all distribution of their films be burdened with DRM is not only ineffective, but it is also harming indie artists who would love to access the features without the restrictions and massive licensing fees. Hopefully, this project will succeed and give those artists the control (or lack of control) they want over their work.

from the lame dept

Following on the US FCC's decision to let Hollywood add some DRM to movies it broadcasts to television, it looks like UK regulators Ofcom have gone even further in allowing the BBC to similarly use a form of DRM to try to stop copying of HD programming. Not surprisingly, this also came at the request of the entertainment industry. But, again, this seems to be about breaking what your technology allows, just so that the entertainment industry can have the illusion of control. The reports all say things like "This will allow broadcasters to stop piracy of shows," but that's patently ridiculous. There are always ways around these blocks for those who really want to get there -- and those shows will still end up online just as quickly (or maybe a few seconds later). And at that point, the locks are meaningless... except to folks who didn't want to have to buy an expensive locked down settop box that is required to view this kind of content. It's an incredibly anti-consumer move that has little to no benefit to the entertainment industry, other than in their minds.

from the your-customers-can-count-you-know dept

For several years TV carriers have enjoyed bickering over which company has the most HD channels, in part because it creates a debate focused on perceived value -- and steers the conversation away from who offers the lowest prices (or the fact that companies seem to impose annual or bi-annual TV hikes in unison). Carriers only just recently surpassed the 100 HD channel count, so it was surprising this week when Dish Network suddenly and proudly announced that the company was the first to pass the 200 HD channel mark -- insisting "only DISH Network has delivered" on this supposedly-epic promise. Except amusingly, Dish Network didn't bother to include a full list of the channels they added, and when reporters and bloggers on the TV/telecom beat started asking Dish questions, the company started getting a little bit uncomfortable:

"I asked Dish Network's PR department for a list of the 200 HD channels, numbered from 1 to 200. Not too surprising, the company was evasive, saying the 200 HD channels could be found at its web site. However, when I told them I could not locate more than around 130 HD channels listed at DishNetwork.com, the company's PR department got even more evasive -- and started to act a bit strange. At one point, a company spokeswoman said she could give me a breakdown of the 200 HD channels on "background only," meaning I couldn't attribute the information to Dish Network."

As it turns out, Dish's marketing department had gotten creative -- and was suddenly counting 57 different On Demand movie titles as"channels" (the Alvin & The Chipmunks 2 channel, anyone?) and just hoped that nobody would notice. So instead of being seen as the TV operator that offers the most HD channels, Dish Network is now being seen as the TV operator who assumes everybody is stupid, which we'll assume wasn't what the company's PR department was aiming for.